GARLIC HARVEST 2022

This past weekend, it was time for the 2022 garlic harvest at the farm!

Raised bed garlic

It's been in the ground since November so about six months, give or take a week or two. You leave it in until the tops start drying.  You also give it a week without watering to allow them a chance to begin the drying process in the ground and so they won't be damaged as you gently pull them for the harvest.

Our raised bed is full of good soil and compost so they just pulled up easily.

Freshly pulled garlic

I put them all into a basket and carried them to the porch.  It looks like a mess but it will clean up easily.

Cleaning garlic after harvesting

First you just gently pull off the dried crispy lower leaves.  They really just come off as you run your hands around them to clean off some dirt etc.  Just be careful not to peel off the papery skin around the head of garlic, they need to dry inside since it protects them.

Tying up bunches of garlic for drying

Then I got some twine and scissors. I gathered them in bunches of six or seven, tied them together and made a loop around the other end so I could hang them.

I used some random nails on the porch posts and hung each bunch as I completed them.

Hanging garlic to dry

When I was done, I took them all to the barn and hung them on our "garlic nails" (i.e. nails I put in a few years ago for this use, ha).  They need to cure in a dry area.  It's dark and dry and they do nicely in there.  Usually 2 or 3 weeks.  One note, I realized I didn't trim the roots and roots can pull in moisture from the air.  I went back and trimmed them but forgot to get a picture.

It was such a nice way to spend a hot day...sitting in rocking chair, in the shade of the porch, with a glass of iced tea while I cleaned the garlic and tied them together into bundles...

Life is good!  :-)

GARLIC HARVEST COMING SOON

A couple of you asked about the garlic and we promised an update.  Here it is this past weekend:

It's about time to harvest.  The general rule of thumb is once the lower third of the leaves start browning, stop watering and wait a week to harvest.

Here are links to the last two times we harvested garlic.  

2018 GARLIC HARVEST

2019 GARLIC HARVEST

We didn't do it in 2020 because we missed the deadline for ordering and then the pandemic hit the next year and the place we order from didn't have them.  So this is  our first in a couple of years.

I watered this past weekend but that will be it. We'll harvest next weekend and ironically it will be almost the same day that we harvested it the last time.  This has a been a weird year of weather so...fingers crossed.

 

GARLIC UPDATE

Figured it was time to give a garlic update.  We planted the seed garlic last November, almost 6 months now.  You can see that post HERE.

How it started...

How it's going...

The garlic is at the point where we are watering it regularly again, just to keep it growing.  We will keep watering thru the end of May and stop.  Then, as the tops start to fade, it will be time to harvest sometime in mid-June.

Then we'll hang it up for two or three weeks to let it dry and then it will be ready to store away and use.

We do love garlic and using it in our cooking.  When it's roasted, I could eat whole cloves.  However, 2nd Man doesn't appreciate when I do that, ha.

GARDEN IN WINTER UPDATE

We might have freezing temps finally but what we do have planted is growing as it should...

The raised bed garlic is doing great and doing what it's supposed to be doing.  Hoping for some great heads of garlic in about five more months.

And then we harvested our first batch of collard greens.  They look great and other than one plant that's seemingly way behind the others, they are putting on lots of leaves.  After this harvest, we should have another batch in a week or two.

Fall gardening, small as it may be, is giving us ideas for future gardening and trying out some other crops next time.  One of our customers was telling me on the phone the other day that they were harvesting broccoli from their Houston backyard garden.  We had never even thought about growing that.  We already know that Napa cabbage works great.  So next Fall we might try some broccoli.  If you've seen our food pics, you know we love us some broccoli!  

We're back up to the 70's after dipping into the upper 20's.  'Tis the season in this part of the world.

 

GARDEN IS DOING NICELY

At the risk of boring everyone with garden pictures, here are the latest, LOL!

Garlic in raised bed

The garlic has ALL come up.  36 planted and 36 sprouts.  That's pretty awesome.  At this point they are pretty much self sufficient and they don't require much water as long as there is some rain.  If it rains a lot during the week, I'll lightly water them on the weekend or if no rain, I'll give them a good soaking.  They are freeze safe so no worries there.  They'll just keep doing their thing until Spring and then it'll be getting close to harvest time.

Collard greens in raised bed

Check out the collard greens!

2nd Man looked at them and said "I think we'll be eating collard greens in a week or two!"  Watch for some collard green recipes coming soon.  Now, we kind of wished we had planted the Napa cabbage, ha.

Fall gardening is much easier than "late Spring/early Summer" gardening that's for sure.  We might need to look at more "cold weather friendly" things to grow.

GARLIC HAS BEEN PLANTED

I got the garlic planted this weekend as well.  We're always excited to grow some garlic but we skipped last season because of the pandemic we missed the ordering deadline.  We didn't miss it this time, ha.

Lorz Italian garlic

We ordered from Great Northern Garlic.  We don't get anything for mentioning them, just putting it out there for anyone who wants to order some quality seed garlic.  It came a few weeks ago so we put them in the fridge to let them get ready for the cooler weather.

Sorting the seed garlic

I sort through them, you break them apart and try to leave the paper skin on each clove.  You are planting them not cooking with them.  I sorted them to get 36 good ones (I look for the plump cloves).

I use the bag they come in to put them so I can get them to the planting bed easier.

Garlic planting tool

Then after getting the soil turned and fluffed up (added some fresh along with a bit of compost), I poked 36 holes in the bed.  A couple years back, someone asked me if this was a special tool.  No, you can use anything to poke a hole, but to save my back for doing 36 holes, I use this.  It used to be another tool that the end broke off of when I was using it to dig the trench for the underground water hose to the garden.  I just put it aside thinking I'd throw it away.  Then when I needed something to make a bunch of holes once, I thought "hmm, this might work" and it did!  It's nice because I can use the handles at the top, stand over the bed to make a hole, wiggle it around etc.  It works great.

Put them in the holes pointy end up, ha.

Cover with soil.

Is this before or after?  Ha.  After the holes are filled with the garlic cloves, I go over it by hand and smooth it all out.  After all the hard work, there's nothing to see for it when you're done, ha.

As in years past, I covered it with a straw mulch and water it well.  Depending on how wet the Winter is, they shouldn't need regular watering (well, by regular we mean daily).  Will water once a week when we're out there but otherwise we just set them and forget them.

Hopefully in a few weeks we'll have some little green sprouts coming up through the mulch and next May or June, we'll harvest 36 heads of garlic and hang to dry.

TIME TO ORDER GARLIC FOR FALL PLANTING

In most areas, garlic is planted in the Fall for Spring harvesting.  Of course you have to get the variety that works best for your climate.  There are hardneck and softneck varieties.

OUR PLANTING EXPERIENCE

For us, we get softneck.  Growing garlic is much easier than you think.  You just get your bed ready, poke holes, drop the cloves in, cover it all up, mulch it and then just water occasionally (usually our Winter weather provides enough regular rainwater).  Water in the Spring if no rain and by late May or June, you have garlic ready for drying.  A few years ago, after a couple of earlier not so great attempts, we finally found a variety, the LORZ Italian, that worked great for us.

Garlic drying in the barn

We ended up with a LOT of garlic drying in the barn. 

The thing is, you have to order now (and in the next few weeks) for delivery in the Fall.  By the time we post about planting it in the Fall, it's too late for readers to order so we figured we'd be proactive and let you know now and remind you that if you want to plant garlic, in most places, now is the time to order it.

I put it off one year and by the time I tried to order, they were already out.  Last year with the pandemic I just plain forgot about it and sure enough, sold out!  So this year, 2nd Man has been reminding me to order it and I waited for it to show up and I ordered some.

Here is where we ordered ours from:

GREAT NORTHERN GARLIC

We do not get anything from them and this is not a paid endorsement, this is just us recommending a great company that had a quality product compared to what we had found elsewhere in prior years.

Here is the description from their website:

"Good at tolerating the heat of summer.  Lorz Italian excels in mild winter climates but is suitable for even the furthest north growing regions.  This robust, easy to peel artichoke cultivar imparts bold garlic flavor.  Very large bulbs with a storage life of about 10 months."

We found that to be 100% accurate as they did well for us and we had plenty of cooking garlic for almost a year.  A one pound bag gave us 36 great heads of garlic when we harvested.  There probably were about 48 if we used a bigger bed and we just might try that this fall by using the larger 4x8 raised bed.

Anyway, wherever you order from, now is the time to order garlic for the Fall!

GARLIC PROCESSING DONE

Recently, I took a break to process the garlic.  I'm afraid I might have left it to dry a little too long.   I checked last year and it was about a month earlier when I did it.  This all happened a couple of weeks ago, we forgot to post about it.

I might have left the garlic to dry a little longer than last year.  It was a bit separated but hey, it's still edible, that's all that matters.  This is it after I cut it down from the rafters in the barn.

A few weeks prior, I was at HEB (a Texas grocery chain) and saw these bags.  They are reusable mesh produce bags and I decided they would be great for putting the garlic in.

I sat on the porch (in the shade of course) and cut off the stems and peeled off the outer few dirt covered layers.  Some of the heads had shrunken a bit too much and were pulling apart into individual cloves but again it tastes like yummy garlic so it's all good in the long run, ha. 

The mess at my feet when I was done but it was easy to sweep off the porch...

...and here is the final harvest, I forgot to count the heads, but the weight was 5.1 lbs of garlic!

I'm just storing this in a cool, dark spot but we've already been using it.  It's great to have so much garlic for whatever we want to use it for.  But we do need to find some good new ways to use large quantities of garlic.

EDIT: I had set this to post automatically last night before bed.  Awoke this morning to the news of yet another mass shooting, this time at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California.  So sad to things like that.

GARLIC HARVEST 2019

Vampires beware...it was time for...

Raised bed garlic harvest

...the Great Garlic Harvest of 2019, ha.  I figured I better get them out of the ground before the monsoon rains and because they were turning brown.  The general rule of thumb that we've read about (and what I did last year) was as soon as the lower 1/3 or so of leaves were brown and dry, it's time to harvest. 

I don't pull them up of course, that could damage the bulbs.  It's easier to take a small shovel (or your hands) loosen the soil around each head and then gently lift them out of the ground.  

Since garlic can sunburn, I put the cart in the shade as I harvested them. 

Rubbermaid cart with garlic harvest

Once I filled up the trusty Rubbermaid garden cart with the harvest, I headed to the workshop.  I opened the doors and back window and there was actually a nice breeze blowing through (this was two Saturday's ago, not a couple days ago when it was mid-90's, ha).  

Twine and scissors

I sorted them and got the twine out and bundled them all up.

Garlic drying

We had left the nails up from last year's harvest and so I just put them right back up in the same spot as last time.  Why mess with a good thing?  We should only have to let them cure for a couple more weeks.

You have to wait until all the green has turned brown.  It would be fun to braid them but I need to read up on that.  It might be easier to just sort the heads and keep them in storage, especially since we have so many and will be giving some away.

FINALLY FALL AND A SMALL HARVEST

Was at the farm Saturday all day.  Click HERE for yesterday's post.  We spent the day doing small projects in various places.  Moving some things from the house to the barn/shed, just kind of taking inventory of what we have and looking around at what major projects to think about for next year.  

It was a beautiful day.  Crazy that early in the week we had lows in the 30's.  Saturday it got to 78.  If you don't like the weather in Houston, just wait.

Look!  It's finally Fall at the farm, ha! 

Tree with Fall leaves

This is one of the few trees that actually changes color like we see in other places.  Most of the trees (at least that we can get to and/or see) are mesquite or hackberry or some other variety whose leaves just seem to go from green to brown to gone.  

This one is near the barn and looks very pretty.

Frog

Thankfully, no spider attacks this weekend.  Instead, it was a frog invasion.  Saw these little things all over.  Not sure why, if it's "frog season" or what, but we must have seen ten of these.  They eat bugs so we're OK with a frog invasion.  

Raised bed Fall garden

Here is the garden.  Doing nicely and look and the two beds with the straw (click to enlarge)...all the garlic is finally up and growing nicely!

Collard greens

Best of all, we were able to get our first Fall harvest this year.  A batch of good old collard greens!  2nd Man will be turning these into something yummy very soon.

Hope you had a great weekend!

PLANTING SEED GARLIC

Got a few big projects done this weekend and this was one of them:

The same weekend as last year so it seemed like a good time to get the seed garlic into the raised beds.  Since we have new readers, instead of linking to last year's post on it, we figured it would be nice to have new pictures and details on we how things might have changed this time around.

Raised bed

I had already turned soil a few weekends back.  This was before, ready to go...

Holes for planting garlic

Then I took my tool and made 36 holes in the the soil.  About 2 inches deep.  Six rows of six.  

Seed garlic

Then I sorted through the seed garlic, breaking apart the heads into the individual cloves.  Now this isn't like getting garlic ready to cook with, you want to leave as much of the "skin" on as possible.  Of course in regular handling and pulling them apart, the skin does sometimes just fall off.  You don't plant the ones that are completely "naked".  

This garlic was ordered last Spring for shipment in September.  When we got it, we put it in the fridge drawer to trick the bulbs into thinking it is Winter...and they will be ready to do their thing. 

I sorted them into piles of twelve each just to make it easier to grab a handful and fill up a dozen holes at a time.  I also tried to get the ones that were bigger and seemed the healthiest.

Planting garlic

Then you just put them down in the hole...

Planting garlic pointed end up, root end down

...make sure it is pointy end up and root end down!

Raised bed with garlic

Since we still had a bag of soil leftover from cleaning up all the vegetable beds, I decided to fill the holes by adding a nice layer of fresh soil on top of them all.

I smoothed it all out and then...

Straw mulch

...I topped it off with straw mulch (it was windy and I lost some as you can see, ha).  Then I got the hose and watered it all down.  

Garlic in raised beds

OH!  And I did it TWICE!

Yep, since we had such good luck with garlic this year (finally), we figured we'd try to double that luck and so I filled two beds.  I dug 72 holes and planted 72 cloves.  We should end up with a lot of garlic in about six months or so.  I hope our friends and family like it...we might be giving a lot away, ha.